Leaked Intel slides detail Haswell's Lynx Point chipset

New details on Intel’s Haswell microarchitecture, the successor to Ivy Bridge, have recently emerged. Specifically, a series of leaked slides have been posted online that outline the Lynx Point chipset in pretty great detail.

Desktop boards are expected to ship with support for up to 14 USB 2.0 ports, six USB 3.0 ports and SATA 6Gbps ports as well as eight PCIe 2.0 lanes. The slides indicate that two of the USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps ports will likely share bandwidth through the PCI Express pipeline.

The Lynx Point-LP, a low-power platform designed for mobile systems, naturally won’t ship with all of the aforementioned ports. As we understand it, this platform will feature support for up to eight USB 2.0 ports and just four USB 3.0 connections.

Furthermore, there will only be four SATA ports and only three will be capable of 6Gbps transfers. Total PCIe lanes will be reduced to six while all SATA ports and two USB 3.0 ports will work through the PCI pipeline.

Unsurprisingly, Lynx Point-LP won’t support CPU overclocking but as The Tech Report points out, there is one other interesting change worth mentioning. Intel appears set to remove the DMI and FDI interconnects that typically connect to the processor. The platform will instead use a new OPI (On Package Interface) link that features eight lanes of bandwidth.

The slides also point out that Lynx Point will be built using the 32nm process and will be part of the processor’s thermal management scheme to throttle back power if temperatures become too hot.

Most expect Haswell to surface on retail shelves sometime around the second quarter of 2013.